Joan LowellJoan Lowell was born in
Berkeley on November 23rd, 1902, as Helen Wagner. Her film career began in 1919
at Goldwyn Studios, where she worked as an extra. She can be spotted in Souls
for Sale (1923), a delightful comedy-drama about themovie business. After Souls
for Sale, Joan appeared in a handful of films, and her career seemed to
be going places. In 1925 an uncredited Joan plays a friend of the film's
heroine in Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush. This was Joan Lowell's last
film work for almost a decade. In 1927, she married playwright Thompson
Buchanan, but the marriage barely lasted two years. After divorcing Buchanan, she penned her infamous 'autobiography', Cradle of the Deep, a Book
of the Month club selection that shifted over 100,000 copies.
D. W. Griffith was
eager to produce a big screen adaptation of
Cradle, but when the
truth came out, his plans went by the wayside. Joan later sold the film rights
to tiny Van Beuren Studios. The result was 1934's
Adventure Girl,
an outrageous road-show feature shot on location in Guatemala. Joan narrates
and appears on screen as a feisty gal eager to plunge into the jungles of
Central America in search of lost cities and forgotten treasures.
Aside from her film
career, Joan Lowell worked as a tabloid reporter and continued to write books--including
Reporter Gal (1933) and
Promised Land (1952). In addition to
writing, she ran a large coffee plantation in Brazil from 1936 until her death
in 1967.
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